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Pakistan hit by new aftershocks
10/24/2005
MUZAFFARABAD, Oct 23 (AFP): New aftershocks rattled quake-hit northern Pakistan on Sunday as aid trickled into the mountainous region and relief agencies struggled to reach cut-off survivors before winter.
An aftershock measuring 4.9 on the Richter scale was felt at 5:44 am (0044 GMT) in Mansehra town, which has become a refuge for thousands of survivors from more badly devastated towns and villages in the Kashmiri mountains.
There were no immediate reports of casualties from the latest tremor, one of more than 700 which have shaken the region since the 7.6-magnitude October 8 quake killed more than 53,000 people and left more than three million homeless.
But at least five people were reportedly killed in neighbouring Afghanistan when an earthquake struck eastern Paktika province, bordering Pakistan, around dawn, the Afghan defence ministry said.
"We don't know exactly the scale of the damage. Afghan National Army troops are on the ground helping villagers," ministry spokesman General Mohammad Zahir Azimi told a press briefing.
As helicopter aid flights resumed over the Himalayan foothills of Pakistani Kashmir in clear morning skies, more choppers from the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) were on the way.
The alliance, a military grouping which has been reluctant to take on humanitarian missions, pledged Saturday to boost the relief effort with some 1,000 troops and a small number of choppers.
Pakistan and India, nuclear-armed rivals which have fought two wars over the devastated region of Kashmir, also moved Saturday to coordinate the aid effort more closely on both sides of the disputed Kashmiri frontier.
Islamabad made a formal proposal for two-way movement of Kashmiris across the de facto border, or Line of Control (LoC), while New Delhi announced plans to set up three relief centres on the highly militarised frontier.
A UN relief coordinator in this quake-hit capital of Pakistani-administered Kashmir, which bore the brunt of the calamity, said the world was only just "coming to grips" with the catastrophe and more choppers were urgently needed.
"Two weeks after the earthquake that devastated this region countless thousands (of people) need to be reached in high-altitude terrain," Rashid Khalikov, the UN humanitarian aid area coordinator here, told reporters.
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